Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

On The Draft Of The Eleventh Party Congress

Resolution On Work In The Countryside[1]

Letter To Comrade Osinsky

Written:1 April, 1922First Published:1925; Published according to
the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 2nd Printing, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1973,Volume 33, pages 327-329Translated:David Skvirsky and George HannaTranscription\HTML Markup:David Walters&R. CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

April 1, 1922

Comrade Osinsky,

Alter thinking over the conversation I had with you about the work of the
    Agricultural Section of the Party Congress, I have arrived at the conclusion
    that the most urgent thing at the present time is:

not to tie our (neither the Party's nor the Soviet Government's) hands by
    any orders, directives or rules until we have collected sufficient facts
    about economic life in the localities and until we have sufficiently studied
    the actual conditions and require-ments of present-day peasant farming;

under no circumstances to permit what would be most dangerous and harmful
    at the present time, and what the local authorities may easily slip
    into-superfluous, clumsy and hasty regulation that has not been tested by
    experience.

The recent Congress of Soviets laid down the line. The task of the Party
    Congress, in my opinion, is to discuss in the Agricultural Section the
    application of this line in the light ofpractical experience in the
    localities;to instruct the Central Committee of the R.C.P. and the
    People's Commissariat of Agriculture (the Soviet government bodies in
    general) more thoroughly to collect detailed facts that can be used as
    verification material; to order, or rather, to give directions to the
    Communist group at the next session of the All-Russia Central Executive
    Committee to the effect that in working out the details of the decision
      of the Congress of Soviets, i.e., in converting this decision into new and
    more detailed laws, to be as cautious as pos-sible so as not to hinder the
    successful development of agricultural production by clumsy
    interference.

What we must fear most of all, I think, is clumsy inter-ference; for we
    have not yet made a thorough study of the actual requirements oflocalagricultural life and the actual abilities of the machinery
    of local administration (the abil-ity not to do evil in the name of doing
    good).

Hence, it seems to me that it is desirable that somethingapproximatingthe following be included in the resolution of the
    Party Congress based on the proceedings of the Agri-cultural Section:

1) The Party Congress, having heard the report of the proceedings of the
    Agricultural Section, accepts it as information; it finds that the material
    so far collected on the experience of the localities is inade-quate and that
    the primary task of the Party and of Communist groups in all Soviet bodies
    is to collect carefully and make a close study of local practical
    experience.

2) The Congress regards the dissolution (or hasty reorganisation?) of the
    agricultural co-operative organ-isations as a mistake, and recommends the
    greatest caution in this matter.

3) On the question of the conditions on which hired labour may be
    employed on the farms, and of the terms on which land may be rented, the
    Party Congress recommends all officials engaged in this field of work not to
    restrict either of these transactions by unnec-essary formalities, but to
    confine themselves to putting into effect the decisions of the recent
    Congress of Soviets and to studying the practical measures it would be
    expedient to adopt to curb all tendencies to go to extremes and harmful
    excesses in these matters.

4) The Congress considers that the primary and main object of all Party
    activities among the peasantry is to render practical assistance in
    immediately extending the area planted to crops, bringing fresh lands under
    the plough, increasing the output of farm produce and in alleviating the
    hardships of the peasantry. All efforts and resources must be devoted to
    assisting and encouraging the poor section of the peasantry, and every
    effort must be made to devise measures that in practice will prove suitable
    for this purpose oven under the present difficult conditions.

With communist greetings,

[1]The suggestions made in Lenin's letter were used as the basis for
      the Eleventh Party Congress resolution “On Work in the Country-
      side”. The Congress instructed the Central Committee to set up
      a permanent commission at the C.C. to direct work in the country-side.